Review: The Sims 3

Pros: It’s The Sims but with prettier graphics, they didn’t mess too much with success; The personality trait based AI is hours of fun in itself; All the vaguely-RPG elements make it more of a game; The series’ humor is intact; Really, who doesn’t love The Sims?

Cons: The default lifespan for Sims is ridiculously short; Like in real life, the work week is dull and drags on seemingly forever

Verdict: Don’t deny it, you love The Sims. And you’ll love this worthy evolution of the series too.

Grade: A+

The Sims 3. What is there to say that hasn’t been said a million times about The Sims and The Sims 2? The overwhelming popular and massively profitable series has been EA’s biggest cash cow and the bane (and secret obsession) of hardcore gamers for nearly a decade. And this isn’t a huge departure, keeping the objectively-boring-but-inexplicably-addictive gameplay of the first two while adding some additional touches to keep up with technology.

So is it worth your time and money? Absolutely.

While I played the first two games far more than I usually admit, I didn’t get too deep into the expansions. So some things, such as interactive jobs and cars, were new to me despite being a carry-over for more dedicated fans. But if you’re like I am and happily play the core games while blissfully ignoring the expensive add-ons there’s a whole lot of new content here you missed the first time around. Vaguely interactive jobs, cars, a bustling town with common spaces and towns, all revelations that debuted years ago. And they were all great and made me wish I’d paid more attention to the additional content.

The biggest real addition aside from the graphics are the personality traits system. Replacing the percentage sliders from games past, each Sim can be assigned five personality traits ranging from the mundane (Artistic, Athletic) to the amusing (Absent-Minded, Clumsy) to the downright absurd. My personal favorite is Insane. It makes your Sim literally insane. They wear pajamas to work, fish in the swimming pool, slap people for no clear reason. It’s easily the most amusing thing in series history.

My concern about the new system was that replacing a series of detailed sliders with blanket attributes would make the AI less customizable and less differentiated. Oh how wrong I was. The ability for personality traits to combine and blend to create a real, cohesive person is absolutely creepy.

Naturally, being a borderline narcissist, my first Sim was me. I made him look mostly like me (surprisingly easy in the current iteration of the character creation system), dressed him in clothes I would wear, then gave him a set of personality traits that I think best suit me, both positive and negative. And he became me. It was like looking in a mirror. I’m not exaggerating; when I got back from reading World War Z at a coffee shop and fired up the game Sim Danny, who works for the local newspaper (I know, I know), refused to write and insisted on going to a coffee shop to read a book called “Zombies? Zombies!” When he started getting shot down by every woman he talked to I thought I’d entered the Twilight Zone.

In fact my favorite part of the game by far is making people I know or famous people and throwing them into funny situations. Right now the temptation is overwhelming to stop writing this review and put President Obama, Vice President Biden and Paris Hilton in a house together just to see what would happen. The sociological experiment aspect is a great game in itself.

Of course if you want to actually play the game as, you know, a game, that’s expanded as well. The Sims 3 feels a lot more like an RPG of everyday life than previous versions. Your Sim has wants which are essentially mini-quests, the skill progression feels a lot like gaining experience, it’s almost like a single-player MMO without a point. And it’s a lot of fun.

For example, going back to Sim Danny, at one point (when he was supposed to be working) he decided he wanted to learn what bait to use to catch sardines, then to catch five of them. So I brought him down to the pier and had him fish until his Fishing skill was high enough to learn about different types of bait, then to the bookstore to buy a book about bait that he read to learn what he wants to learn. Then he went to the grocery store to buy the required bait before finally heading back to the pier to catch the fish. It seems mundane, and it is, but by The Sims standards it’s on par with slaying a dragon.

The other highly-touted addition is the ability to record movies, as illustrated at the top of this post. The actual recording is simple: You just click a button to start the recording then click it again to stop. You can then choose to upload them for others to view or manually work with the .avi file it creates. Which is fine unless you want to something like I did above. I admit I cheated and used Premier to cut it together and added the music in post since it doesn’t record audio, it’s not done entirely in the game. But it’s a fun feature which I’m sure people are going to use to great effect over the game’s life span.

As far as gripes, there’s really not a lot wrong with the game. The formula has been refined to the point they’ve ironed out all the wrinkles. The only huge problem I had is that the game defaults to a 90-day lifespan for a Sim which is way too short in my opinion. It speeds along the multi-generational aspect but doesn’t let you really get indepth with one character, which is my playing style. As soon as you really get your Sim’s life in order he’s retired. It’s fixed easily enough in the Game Settings but it was a strange default choice.

The work week also seems to grind on forever since most of the actual gameplay, and of course the most enjoyable part of the gameplay, happens outside the office and on weekends. But The Sims is supposed to be a life simulator, and that’s basically life.

Overall, The Sims 3 is everything one would hope it would be. Series veterans will be relieved that they haven’t messed with success. And hardcore gamers will appreciate the added elements of more traditional gameplay, so don’t worry what your friends will think, pick up a copy and play it proudly. And if they give you a hard time make their Sim dopplegangers and force them to live with Paris Hilton.